Email Privacy: Insights for Nonprofits

Email Deliverability Rate: Why It Matters

Email Deliverability is the percentage of those who actually see your messages in their inbox

When was the last time you checked your overall deliverability of your email campaigns? Some organizations come to us, touting an email list 200k strong, but mention that response rates are lower than the past.

This is largely because many of them see campaigns that only reach 60-70% of their recipients’ inboxes. This can be for a large swath of reasons.

Paired with this is the new restrictions on email privacy. If your team is operating such that an agency recommends an eAppend just to add a large number of email constituents, you need to consider the ramifications. We work with our clients each month to acquire new email addresses in strategic ways, such that the unsubscribe rate is minimal, engagement is maximum, and deliverability rates do not see a hit.

What goes into email deliverability, especially for nonprofit organizations

Your team has a great mission, and you want your supporters to know about it. And we want them to know as well! Deliverability can be a complex equation, but a number of factors come into play that you can help control.

Current Engagement Rates—what percentage of constituents engage with your email content via opens and clicks
Unsubscribe Rates—do you have a large unsubscribe rate with an average send, repeatedly
Subject lines—when someone has not engaged in a while, email platforms such as Gmail will analyze your subject line to determine if it should go to spam filters
Email content—Similar to subject lines, content matters for platforms, particularly when a user has not engaged over time with your content

What you can do to maximize deliverability

When it comes to email acquisition, you must think more strategically. You need constituents who are expecting to receive emails from you! Not just those who are lookalikes to donors, or who gave you a physical address via a donation but did not provide an email address. This is not to say that you cannot create ways to drive those constituents to opt-in. That’s where we can help.

For your cultivation file, if you are still mostly batch-and-blasting all constituents rather than evaluating and segmenting those who have not interacted with your campaigns, it’s time to do so.

We recommend creating communication plans for active, inactive, lapsed and super lapsed email constituents. Segmentation in this fashion is not related to their last gift to you.

Email deliverability is a complicated equation that can really make or break your success with campaigns. The givingMD team is here to help!

Does email deliverability sound like it may be an issue for your team, but you don't know where to begin? We do! Talk with us today and we'll help you drive success of your program.